


Some Kind of Ben

by Jessa



Series: Some Kind of Ben [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, finnlo - Fandom
Genre: Ahch-To (temple island), Anal Sex, Barebacking, Batuu, Canonverse AU, Crait (Star Wars), Cum Swallowing, Dubcon Kissing, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Force-bond(s), Force-connections, Force-hold kink, Force-suggestions, Friend!Rey, Gen, HEA, Hardcore fluff, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Liberal use of Italics, M/M, Masturbation, NSFW, Naboo (Gallo mountains), Nipples, Oral Sex, Premature Ejaculation, Requited Love, Wrestling Kink, a cock is a penis so call it a penis, ben and finn fight and it gets personal, ben tonguing finn's nipples, ben x finn, cum as anal lube, dom!ben with finn's permission, dom!finn, finnlo+rey, i think finn tongues ben's nipples in chapter 4 or 5 so i'll put that on as well, kylo ren and ben solo are personas of the same person, kylo/ben has a breakdown and rey helps him, lots of nipples, sex in a temple, sub!Ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 21:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16292324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: What if Finn returned for Ben after the Battle of Crait?This is a canon-divergent finnlo love story, an ode to my current OTP. The first part is a 6-chapter fic from Ben's POV. Epilogues from other character's POVs will follow in the coming months. Subscribe!I've moved here to Pillowfortif you'd like to get in touch there, or feel free to leave a comment here. I'd love to know what you think of this work, and thank you so much for taking the time to read it xx





	1. Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Leoba/leofgyth very kindly made a moodboard on tumblr in response to Chapter 1.](http://web.archive.org/web/20181204013747/https://leofgyth.tumblr.com/post/179055372688/moodboard-for-gravity-by-jesssssah-what-if-finn)

Gravity pulls him down like a ruin. It’s the weakest force but it’s just strong enough to overpower what remains beneath the last of the apparatus. What’s left inside of Ben. He stares at the dusty floor of the abandoned base, tears brimming in his eyes, and wonders what might change were gravity to pull these down, too. Were the tears to fall like Kylo Ren.

Is gravity kind enough to do that, now Luke’s shamed him and Rey’s rejected him again? Will gravity let him just collapse here for a minute in the dust and the salt and just fucking cry while Kylo’s broad, caped back faces the light and masks Ben from the division of snowtroopers and Hux waiting outside? They can’t see any of this, but someone else can. Someone else is.

Ben senses the fear and the anger first, this is what he notices - recognises - before he sees Finn; Ben can feel him, he doesn’t need to look up. What would happen though if he did? What would happen if Ben were in fact to suddenly get his shit together? To bring a gloved hand to his traitorous eyes, damp with his feelings, and rise to his feet? Would he then be able to do to Finn what he didn’t that night in the desert on Jakku?

But Ben’s too defeated now to even move. Too defeated by belief that surely this time Rey has turned her back on him for good. He doesn’t presently have the will to wonder for her, even hardly at all to wonder why Finn’s returned now, but if he really tries he could hazard the faintest ghost of a guess. Ben has just enough left in him to plead it in a whisper down to the cold scuffed floor:

“Make it quick.”

The fear and the anger in Finn draw closer, cautious and waiting for something, as though growing in confidence that Kylo is gone and it’s only Ben here now, because it is. And Ben waits there, knelt on the floor and wondering if that’s what it is he’s doing: actively waiting for death. His drive to exist like the last glint of his father’s dice in his lonely hand, fading, as he starts to wonder if they, too, ever really existed.

“I’m not here to do that,” Finn says. “I’m not here to kill you. Ben.”

He chokes at the sound of his true name as it echoes in the silence. The fear and the anger in Finn are still moving towards him, closing ground, and something just as familiar is also there now. Ben can sense it. The same gentle heart beneath, reminding him of his own as he thinks again of Rey. Tears do fall down his face now; she’d been the one to first find that heart again, in both he and in Finn.

Eyes still on the floor, he hears the creak of leather boots before Finn’s trousered thighs crouch in his field of vision. Crouch down with him. Ben’s gloved hands are still held loose and idle, halfway between two points, between two actions; one is grounding and the other is returning to some lofty gesture, false in its confidence. Perhaps a Force-hold or a move for his saber. Something, anything, to detract from what he wants to say. What he wishes he could say now to Finn.

What if he opens his mouth and the words won’t come? Not the regrettable words of reaction but the ones he wants heard? The right words have failed him all day, and in this place, in the stillness and the darkness of the night all around them now on Crait, they still elude Ben as though frozen like ice inside his larynx. Crystalline, like the salt that covers the planet, the residue of which he still stares at now on the floor of the abandoned base.

Ben won’t say anything, but perhaps he’ll look up. Finn is still here, crouching with him and he’s drawn no weapon. He’s still angry and fearful but there’s no intent to harm, Ben can feel that, too. His eyes lift to the dirty weft of the shirt Finn wears tucked loose into the band of his dark trousers. Ben stares there for minutes, studying the warp until, for some reason he doesn’t understand, the words he wants to say are there on his tongue at last.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“They’re waiting for me,” Finn says.

Ben knows it’s true. He can sense it. Rey closed the ramp but the Falcon is still docked.

“Did _she_ send you back?”

“No.”

“Leia, then?”

“No.”

 _Chewie?_ Ben thinks to himself, unable to ask that aloud.

“I came back here,” Finn says, quietly, “Because I _wanted_ to.”

“That was foolish.”

“Maybe it was,” Finn murmurs. “I mean…”

Ben listens to the soft rasp of his voice as his eyes continue to stare at the weave of Finn’s shirt.

“...I just nearly killed myself to try to stop you, that was pretty foolish too, right?”

Ben swallows again and very slowly continues to slide his eyes upwards. They catch on Finn’s upper lip as he dips his head just enough for their eyes to finally meet. Finn is forcing their eyes to finally meet. They are wide and dark and deep and in them Ben sees light; three points reflecting from the division still waiting outside beyond the breach. Bright circles, all differently sized like things that orbit each other. Ben stares at them.

He witnessed it from the shuttle; two speeders still advancing when all the rest pulled back, too chickenshit to go any further. Two speeders continuing straight for the walkers until one diverted for the siege cannon. The one containing Finn. Ben watched the corroded metal parts buckle, twist, then finally evaporate like vapour in the wake of the tracer beam’s building heat, until the second speeder T-boned.

“She saved your life,” Ben murmurs. “You were nearly gone.”

“She _said_ something to me after that,” Finn almost pleads. “About _saving.”_

He lifts his hand. Ben tracks it with precision, sensing, his eyes rapidly narrowing but Finn continues reaching out towards Ben. His jaw is so tense it aches, his gaze is now a glare, but Finn’s hand doesn’t slow, and it doesn’t waver. And Ben’s still so defeated.

“Don’t flinch, I won’t hurt you,” Finn whispers, as Ben’s stomach clenches and his lower lip quivers. “You saved me once, too, remember?”

Ben stares at the light in the eyes again as the pads of Finn’s fingers make contact with the skin of his unscarred cheek. The skin of Finn brushes across the damp surface, wiping the moisture away. Drying the cheek. Drying his tears.

“I won’t hurt you,” Finn whispers again, as his warm palm cups soft around Ben’s jaw. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Ben’s breath has caught somewhere, in his throat maybe. Either that or it’s trapped inside the lungs buried deep beneath the dark, dense layers still concealing so much of him. The quiver in his lower lip is now a shake beyond his control but Finn’s thumb is there, stroking and pressing down gently. Beneath that soft touch, the shake lessens.

Finn works his left hand beneath the heavy folds of the cape at Ben’s right shoulder, shrugging off the static-damping fabric. It lands heavily on the floor of the base and Ben feels gravity loosen its grip just a little as his broad shoulders begin to lift.

Slowly, Finn works the hand still at Ben’s jaw beneath his hair and fingers brush the sensitive skin beneath his ear. Something, just a frisson, trembles across his skin as the hand settles gently at the back of Ben’s neck, and in the stillness and the silence of the dirty, empty space Finn leans in, carefully coaxing Ben towards him.

He gives himself then. Ben gives himself to Finn as he lets him close the distance between them until Ben can feel Finn’s warm breath first, and then at last the warmth of his full upper lip. The supple edges of Ben and Finn slide into place like opposing pieces that aren’t any longer, they’ve just been waiting to fit, and they stay like that for moments, exploring the way their bodies correspond like this. Made for each other at the mouth.

Finn’s hand gently kneads at his nape as they kiss. Ben shifts his lips and it’s just enough for Finn to slide his tongue between them, as he opens his mouth around Ben’s now and the kiss deepens. Crouched on the floor of the abandoned base on Crait, backlit by the diffused light filtering in beams through the transparisteel windows, Finn leans against Ben’s mammoth frame and lays him down, his right hand still cradling at the nape and his mouth still kneading.

“You’re gonna find me, Ben,” Finn breathes heavily, drawing away, his hand still at the back of Ben’s neck as he stares into his eyes. “You hearing me?”

“Don’t go,” Ben whispers, reaching up to pull him back, to find the soft mouth again. “Please, don’t leave.”

“I _have_ to,’ Finn breathes. “You know I do…”

“Come back with me.”

“You know I can’t.”

“I’ve ascended, I can protect you.”

“You’re gonna sense for Rey.”

“I’m not doing that, she’s…”

“Yes, you are,” Finn says. “You’re gonna sense for her and then you’re gonna find me because that’s where I’ll be, waiting for you, too, just like her.”

“She’s not…”

Finn kisses Ben once more on the mouth and then he’s gone. Ben is left alone on the floor of the base, still felled but not entirely by gravity, although it has been kind. And somehow it’s shifted his orbit.


	2. Penance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben returns to a place he remembers to think about Finn and what happened between them on Crait. Someone unexpected shows up and they have a discussion that's long overdue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was ‘Betrayal’. It was a reylo prompt and I struggled with two different but connected stories until I combined them and wrote this as finnlo+rey. I hope what follows goes some way towards resolving Ben and Rey's lingering post-Supremacy conflict because that's really important if the finnlo love story is going to advance (which it is!)
> 
> If you'd like to, please leave any thoughts, I'd love to hear them! Enjoy the read.

Dawn verges and rain sheets across the eastern seam of the Gallo Mountains on Naboo. Ben sits on the dry slate of the summit and watches the weather travel across the mountain chain. Leia used to bring him here sometimes. They would walk the trail to Dee'ja Peak while she tried to calm him down. She never had much luck.

Water seems to temper him, though. Ben’s never disliked rain. He shrugs off his cape and is reminded of Finn dropping the heavy fabric from his shoulders to the bone-dry floor of the base on Crait just before he felt Finn’s mouth; soft and soothing but needy. Giving and generous like the rain but yearning like his body still is now.

Ben touches his right bicep. It still makes him tremble, the memory of clashing blades in the snow with Finn and that somehow a _stormtrooper_ landed the hit that resulted in the faint scar he still wears here, only he isn’t a stormtrooper anymore he’s a _traitor,_ and Ben is still Supreme Leader. Kylo Ren should finish what he started on Starkiller and bring him to justice for that but he isn’t. He’s sitting here alone at the top of a mountain permitting the memories again.

Ben loosens the wide belt around his torso and lays that down on the rockface. He removes his quilted vest and sleeves and folds and stacks them all carefully, feeling the warm climate against his bare skin as humidity soaks his muscles. The moisture in the surrounding air could almost bead, as though the rain were already here. He imagines it arriving, running in rivers down the forms of his body, pooling and dripping off his leather-clad knees and from the ends of his hair.

Somewhere behind the clouds, dawn is breaking. Ben stares at the incoming shafts of rain as their movement pulls the light around the sky and colours lift then blend, blurring like ink into something more tactile than vapour or movement or light. Something you could pull hands through, tussle like hair or caress like the solid surface of skin, and yet it’s all so fragile. A vulnerable scene that reminds him again of Finn and how good it had felt to be taken down to the ground like that, as the feeling of ruin had passed like shadow and in its wake he’d felt reborn.

It had been a relief to give in to something that strong and that good. To the gentle arms and mouth of the man above him who Ben has not stopped thinking about since, re-living it every night for weeks alone in the bed in his chambers and wishing stupidly for him; wishing to lie there beneath him and be treated like that again, kissed and held so fondly and yet with such intensity and urgency. It _had_ been urgent, that kiss. And too fast. He’d missed that mouth even before it was gone.

But mostly it’s just the holding. The feeling of warm skin against him. The touch of someone who cared enough not to hurt him. Like Rey, but somehow different. Not just company or reassurance but active assurance in the first instance that he was still alive. Something clear and focused and fuelled by passion. The touch of someone who cared so much they _meant_ to make Ben feel good. It wasn’t done inadvertently. It wasn’t done timidly. The intent was not to placate him but to stoke his desire unmistakably. To make him feel wanted.

As the first drops of water begin to fall on the summit Ben imagines firm hands and broad, calloused palms placing themselves at his bare shoulders. Running their way down the front of his torso, over his pecs and down his abs as in his mind the soft mouth he remembers from Crait finds the vulnerable skin of his neck, just beneath his ear. Ben sighs and tilts his head, closing his eyes beneath the rain and leaning back as the pleasing drum of it steadies.

Ben reclines on the slate, warm from the temperate air and now slick with the rain as it thrums against his bare upper body. He pictures Finn’s forearms enfolding his torso and pushing him down like this to his back. What would it be like to kiss Finn here and now? To open his mouth and let the water in along with his tongue? To taste the water and Finn and feel the heat of their bodies coupled with the air around them? To let Finn dominate him, just like he had inside the base on Crait?

Ben runs his hands down his own body, wet from the rain, and imagines them finding the back of Finn’s neck, working their way to his face and brushing the edges of his lips against the mouth he’s missed so much. With eyes still closed he indulges himself in another vision of rain dripping from the tip of Finn’s nose, from his ears and off the angles of his square jaw. He imagines gazing up into the dark eyes that have featured in his dreams for weeks. He wouldn’t say thousands of words now to Finn if he could. He’d just say three.

“I’ve missed you.”

Ben murmurs them to no one into the rain as he slides a hand to the seam of his pants, sensing he’s still alone here and in that split second he’s unfastening and wrapping his hand around himself.

As he starts to pull, Ben decides he could settle just to sense Finn now. That would be enough to get him through just the next few weeks, the next few raids. But that would mean sensing for Rey and she’s still refusing to talk to him. Weeks ago he’d tried to tell that to Finn.

_She’s not..._

As those thoughts swirl like the vapour in the sky Ben feels her through the bond and he’s never moved his guilty hands so fast. They fly from his body and he’s off his back, knees up to hide the hard-on even though he knows it’s all done now too late. She’s seen it and she knows what he’s been thinking about.

He braces as he scrambles to pack himself back into his trousers, his face burning as he reaches for his clothes. But the insult he’s expecting doesn’t arrive, and nor does the loss of connection. She’s still there. He’s unsure yet of where, he can’t see her surroundings, perhaps he could ask. Maybe that would break the ice, or repair it, but in the end he doesn’t need to because through the bond she’s talking.

“Finn told me he found you,” Rey says. “And he told me what happened next.”

Ben’s stomach flips. Why is she always so fucking direct? Is that why she hasn't closed the bond, or why she re-connected in the first place? Because she wants to talk about _that?_ And not the other thing at all, not the Supremacy? And does she perhaps _understand_ how he’s feeling now, or how he had moments ago before she sprung him jacking off? He’s still not quite sure for how long she’s been watching.

Does she perhaps understand why he’s here? The connection he has to this place? There are things about him she understands that no one else does, that no one else ever has. Things like loneliness, how alone he’s felt. Things like anxiety, how conflicted he is all the time, caught all the time between destiny and choice and because of that things like why he killed his father.

“No, Ben,” she corrects. “I will never understand that.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“Sorry for what?”

Ben sighs. She’s going to draw this out and take great pleasure in it, he knows it. She’s going to make him say everything he’s done wrong now - especially the things he’s done wrong to her - and draw out his penance. And Ben is going to comply because he wants to see Finn again and also because he knows he owes it to her. Because he wants to see her again, too. _Really_ see her, not just through a bond.

“I’m sorry I did that, Rey.”

She glares and Ben feels patience teeter on its feet inside him, wanting to get the fuck out. He doesn’t let patience go, though, he holds on to that at the expense of a very deep breath, desperately trying to remember why he doesn’t want to lose his shit right now.

“Why are you still so angry at me?” he asks, the muscles in his stomach so tight they might snap but the effort is keeping his voice level; he knows if it wavers she’ll go.

“Oh, give me just a small break, Ben.”

“You’re the one who said _no,_ Rey, that’s all I’m saying.”

 _Fuck,_ he thinks to himself, swallowing hard.

Was that too passive-aggressive? Would she classify that as a jibe? It was definitely reactive, he’ll admit that. Ben holds his breath, waiting to see if she'll stay or go, his stomach still tight as a drum and his jaw aching from the way he’s clenching that now, too.

“You’re not _saying_ anything, Ben, you’re _Force-connecting_ it and besides, what did I say _no_ to?”

He sighs for the second time, sensing this is almost a game to her now - for fuck’s sake she’s almost _mothering_ him - but at least she’s still there, at least she’s still talking. Ben frowns. What the fuck did she say _no_ to in the end?

“I’ll tell you what it was, Ben, because clearly you’ve no idea,” she interrupts, rapidly losing patience, too. “I said _no_ to a proposal you knew damn well I couldn’t accept.”

He opens his mouth to retaliate but she’s too quick.

“How could I join the First Order? How could you ever think I would do a thing like that?”

“That’s not what I asked you to do, Rey,” he says, very close to the line. “Calm the fuck down and you might start remembering it properly…”

“You _betrayed_ me Ben.”

 _“What?_ I had no loyalty to you, I didn’t _owe_ you anything…”

“You led me to believe that by killing Snoke you were renouncing something, but that was a lie and you knew that. You were only ever after power and you used me to get it and I am _still_ struggling with that, Ben, you... you _fuck.”_

“Don’t call me a _fuck._ I’ve said to you _I’m sorry._ Three times now, Rey, actually, three.”

“Well, for what then? _What_ are you sorry for, Ben?”

“Are you kidding me? What the fuck do you mean _what am I sorry for?_ Sorry means _I’m_ _sorry._ For everything in general, Rey.”

“I will not accept your apology unless you specifically say _why_ you’re apologising, Ben,” she says. “I will not.”

He peers at her through the bond. Is she really fucking serious?

“Are you...?”

“Don’t you dare make fun of me, I’ve not got the time. Everything here is broken and I have a thousand things…”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you, alright? I’m really sorry for yelling at you.”

“When?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… I’ve only ever yelled at you _once,_ Rey.”

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Ben…”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you _on the Supremacy,_ alright? I’m sorry for getting _angry._ And I’m sorry...”

He peers at her again. There’s one more thing he’s missing. He can feel it. There’s something else there that he’s done wrong, and if he doesn’t work it out she’ll either drag this out even longer or she’ll fuck off. And he doesn’t want her to fuck off because he’s still missing Finn.

“I’m sorry I fought you for the saber.”

He got it. Ben watches Rey blink back tears.

“But I didn’t want it, Rey,” he murmurs. “I didn’t want it because that lightsaber belongs to _you…_ I was just so fucking tired of fighting with you all the time, over _everything...”_

She had set her jaw, and it still looks menacing to Ben, and he can still feel through the bond that her emotions are so wound they're tighter than his stomach, which is still clenched hard. But now Ben senses Rey has satisfied her need to hold him to account. She’s dropping her jaw. And maybe she hasn’t wanted to do that. Maybe she hasn’t wanted to hear what he just said but she has heard it. Ben’s words - his apology - have connected with Rey at last.

It makes his heart expand when she does things like this for him. He never shows her the smile he feels when she does them, and he doesn’t think he’s about to now, but inside it’s there. Inside it’s glowing just for her because Ben knows he loves _that_ about Rey.

The way she fights her feelings so damn hard, just like he does. The way she’s so incredibly bad at it in such an incredibly different way to him, in the way she responds. Because she doesn’t just get angry and break shit like he does, Rey gets angry and then does things that are useful. Really, really fucking useful.

“I’m sorry, too,” she gifts Ben. “I’m sorry I reacted. I shouldn’t have done that, I regret it. It wasn’t the right thing to do.”

He melts.

“Can you come here?” he whispers. “Please?”

“I don’t even know where you are…”

“The Gallo Mountains.”

She looks at him blankly. Ben takes a very deep breath. He’s thought this name but he hasn’t said it, not in a very long time. He thinks of Finn, of his eyes and the orbs of light he watched in them on Crait, orbiting.

“Chewie knows it,” Ben whispers into the rain, and as he says it his voice cracks and he has to think the rest, he can no longer speak it because the lump in his throat is that big now.

_He’ll help you._

“Why?”

Ben swallows thickly.

“Because I want to see Finn,” he barely breathes. “I miss him and I miss you.”

Rey reaches out her hand through the bond and Ben grasps desperately for it. It’s nothing like on Ahch-To. There’s nothing slow, tentative or gentle about it, and he feels her do the same. She grips him around the back of it, compressing his damp hand hard in her palms front and back as still the rain falls.

If he wanted he could reach out and hold her. He does want it, he realises, as he feels her read his thought and then her arms are around him. Somehow now she’s in his lap with her arms around his back and her chin is on his shoulder and she’s sobbing.

Rey is not small, but she seems that way now, so unlike the muscular frame of Finn who Ben is beginning to know - remember - as broad and solid and big. Rey is just as powerful, awesome and impressive, but in so many ways she’s still so small and he knows he loves _that_ about her, too, because it reminds him how far they still have to go, and Ben _wants_ to go there. And he would still die to save her, to get her to that place.

"Thank you for talking to me,” Ben whispers into her hair. “Rey.”


	3. Inclination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben has returned to the Gallo Mountains. Lonely and upset by a troubling day, he’s started drinking and getting a little loose in the tongue. After a lengthy and revealing heart to heart with Rey, she agrees to help him do something he's been wanting for weeks and weeks...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is in response to the @finnreylopositive prompt ‘Cheers’. From @persimonne’s prompt artwork, I was inspired by the cheeky looks Finn and Rey wear because they realise Ben’s getting trashed and that's probably a good thing.
> 
> I also read [this interesting post](https://jesssssah.tumblr.com/post/179411202265/if-youre-a-reylo-and-refuse-to-acknowledge) by @clyde-logan which supports the idea that Kylo/Ben is really not the greatest wordsmith at times, and that got me thinking again about what he actually says, and I started wondering _what if_ he was even saying the line about letting go _to himself_ in the Throne Room and not to Rey at all? _No no no, you're still holding on, let go_. And that led me to the idea in this chapter that if he could just relax around Rey, maybe they could get somewhere in terms of having constructive conversations, and maybe he could get somewhere too...

The climate is sultry this evening in the peaceful foothills of the Gallo Mountains. Ben sits alone in the Summit Farm Winery sipping from a goblet of blossom wine. His mother used to take him here, too; it edges the start of the trail to Dee'ja Peak and they would glare frostily at each other across the rickety garden furniture as she tried to get him to talk, before eventually giving up and then they’d just walk in a glacial silence to the top.

 _Although,_ Ben muses to himself, collecting the goblet again between his long middle fingers and swilling the contents gently in his palm, _Glaciers aren’t actually that quiet._

It’s more like most of the time there’s just no one around to listen to them moan and whisper. Is that a self-loathing thought? Is he really likening himself to compacted snow right now? He can certainly think of someone he’d like to have around to listen to him moan and whisper, so maybe he is, and it is. Ben sips again from the goblet, gazing wistfully beyond the fig trees that border the edges of the vineyard.

He’s really fucking lonely today; things have become really heavy and the First Order is still on a mobile base, which he hates. Ben misses planets, and he never thought he would. He misses doing things on them, simple things like sitting here on the lawn, sipping wine beneath the newly risen moons, just in his sleeves, trousers and boots, and watching the evening emerge while he thinks about Finn. He hasn’t seen him in over a month.

Ben reclines against the decorative back of the white, cast-aluminium chair, drains his goblet and does what he came here to do: sense for Rey. She’s in a mood.

“Wait,” is the first thing he hears her say through the bond.

Ben reaches for the crystal cut bottle and pours himself a second goblet. Not only does it calm his nerves but it makes him braver than he feels, especially now it’s apparent she’s not exactly in a frame of mind to talk. Maybe instead of doing this he could take what he hasn’t drunk with him and walk the peak now, connect later. He has half a mind to spend the night there anyway, it’s still so warm on Naboo.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she warns, sensing his thoughts. “Just wait, Ben, I’m trying to… fuck this.”

“You’re trying to _what?”_ he whispers.

There’s no danger of being overheard here. He’s alone. He supposes he’s whispering out of habit. Ben leans in and peers at Rey. She huffs as his vision on her sharpens. Something’s in her hands and she’s glaring back with zero amount of patience.

“Honestly, Ben, do you ever think about anything else but your dick?”

He sighs.

“Yes actually, Rey, I do. What’s wrong? What are you trying to do?”

“Fix this damn thing.”

She holds up the two halves of the saber.

“Take a break,” he suggests. “Put it down, talk to me awhile.”

Rey stares at him. Then, still with no view on her surroundings but able to see the rest of her body now, through the bond he watches as she sets down the broken parts.

“I suppose you want to talk about Finn?” she asks, as Ben takes another sip from the goblet in his hand and watches a crinkle pull at her brow. “What are _you_ doing, anyway? Are you at that place again?”

“Yes,” he answers, swilling as he feels the wine beginning to take effect; slowly words are seeming less like obstacles. “I’m waiting for you to show up, remember? You said you would, weeks ago now. Were you lying?”

“No,” she frowns. “I don’t lie, Ben. Honestly, you are so self-absorbed.”

“Oh, well, thank you very much for that assessment. I’ll write that down and read it every day, so I can remember exactly what you really think about me, Rey.”

 _Yeah,_ he thinks to himself. _A lot less like obstacles._

“You really do have just absolutely no fucking clue, do you, Ben?”

“No,” he says. “But I’d like to, so if you could please just stop taking pot shots at me for five seconds, and maybe just, like, talk to me about what’s wrong...”

“What’s wrong, Ben, is that you’ve decimated us, which you very well know.”

“I didn’t do that,” he grumbles, over the top of the goblet. “Well not all of it, you all basically launched a suicide mission, you did most of it to yourselves…”

“You sat back and watched - no - _let_ it happen. That’s called _complicity,_ Ben. And there you are getting drunk... and don't you dare try to deny it, your cheeks are flushed..."

She's pointing at him now. He had shifted in his chair, and opened his mouth to speak, but now he closes it and waits for the tirade to stop as she continues.

 _"..._ Insome bloody peaceful place while we’re desalinating seawater just to have enough to drink, and barely enough at that.”

She sighs.

“Unbelievable, Ben. I mean, do you realise that’s the sort of garbage we’re going through here on a regular basis? Running out of water, let alone sipping… what is it, wine? And do you care?”

“No,” he says, honestly.

Her jaw drops.

“I mean _yes,_ of course I care,” he corrects quickly, flustered. “I meant _no,_ I don’t really know what you’re going through… Where are you anyway? Why the fuck haven’t you got any water? Maybe I could help you do something...”

“You can’t visit Finn,” she says quietly. “If that’s what you’re thinking of _doing...”_

“Rey, we _talked_ about this already,” he whispers. “That’s why you’re gonna come _here.”_

“Ahch-To,” she breathes. “We're on Ahch-To.”

Ben stares at her. He may very well be drunk now, after nearly two goblets of wine and no food, but he can still appreciate the level of trust in him she’s just placed in order to share that. He remembers the last conversation they had here, weeks ago at the peak. The first one since they’d been inside the Throne Room, just before the saber split.

He remembers what happened at the end of that, when they'd been Force-connected on the summit. How she’d apologised and he’d forgiven her, not that he’s ever held Rey’s distrust of him against her.

She'd crept into his arms and he'd held her in the rain. She still means so much to him. And her trust in him, her acceptance of who he is - who he _really_ is - still means more to Ben than the galaxy, and probably even more than ruling it.

“Ben?” she whispers again.

“Yes?”

“Maybe you could come here, but not really be here…”

“Who’s with you?”

“It’s just me, Finn and Chewie, we’ve all split up.”

Ben swallows the last of the crisp salve in his hand, feeling warm even as the refreshing chill of the wine travels down him. He pauses for a moment, looking out again across the view from the foothills of the mountains at the end of the Gallo chain.

The sky is so indigo it’s almost violet and everything looks so green against that. The vapour in the air is beading on the fruits in the trees. The tranquility, the stillness here, the alcohol, it all makes him think for a moment that it _is_ possible. For fuck’s sake, if _Luke_ could do it...

“If you would let me do that,” he whispers, “I would help you with the saber, if you’d let me do that, too.”

“I need plasma.”

“That’s it?” he frowns. “Just plasma? _Shit,_ Rey...”

For fuck’s sake he’s sitting above a natural crust of it, does she realise that?

“No,” she sighs bitterly, sensing his thoughts. “I didn’t… I mean, maybe you could… Well, in any case, if I had a working ship I could go there and get it myself...”

 _“That’s_ what’s holding you up,” he breathes, more to himself than to Rey, as he briefly re-entertains the thought they may yet still come to him on Naboo, and maybe he could walk the peak with another bottle of blossom wine, and Finn...

“What’s wrong with the ship?”

“The comm unit is too unreliable, we can’t go anywhere until it’s replaced.”

 _“_ That ship is a piece of shit, Rey.”

“It’s not, Ben, the Falcon is a good ship, it just has particular… needs.”

She’s glaring at him again.

“Sorry,” he says, and then he remembers. “For calling it a piece of shit ship. It’s not a piece of shit, it’s just terrible.”

“I miss you, Ben.”

 _“What?”_ he snorts. “No, you don’t.”

“I do, Ben. I miss doing this with you.”

“Doing what? Having stupid arguments?”

“Yes,” she says smiling, and he almost smiles back in shock because Ben has never seen her smile like this before.

“Rey, how can you say you miss having stupid arguments?"

“I don’t miss having _stupid arguments,_ I miss having them with _you,_ Ben.”

“I already have too many stupid arguments in a day, I don’t need to have them with you, too. I do like talking to you, though. I do like it how you put up with me.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks at the bottle again, then swills the wine around inside the goblet still cupped in his hand.

“They think I’m a fanatic.”

“Well, seriously, Ben, I mean you kind of are…”

He sighs and takes another sip of wine. She frowns at him and he can feel her sensing.

“They’re shutting you out?”

“Yes.”

“But… you’re the _Leader,_ how can they…?”

“Well, they can’t really, but they try. They tolerate me because they’re afraid, but I’m not useful anymore to them. I’m just scary.”

“You’re not scary, Ben.”

 _Cheers,_ he thinks, unable to say it.

Ben swallows the lump in his throat. Then he swallows the last of the wine. Alcohol is definitely doing all the talking now, when he’s able to talk. He’s never divulged so much to Rey - to anyone - but he knows that’s why he’s connected with her again, why he still wants to see her. He can talk to her. He’s no idea if he could talk like this to Finn. He suspects he probably couldn’t, that it would be... different. But it’s true what he’s let slip about the Order. It angers him, and it’s a relief to finally be able to admit the truth of it.

“I miss you, Rey,” Ben says. “I really do.”

She sighs. Her eyes have softened markedly.

“Why are you _still there?”_ she whispers.

“I’m _afraid_ to leave it,” he whispers back. “And if I leave it…”

“...Where do you go?” she finishes.

“I’m trapped.”

Ben misses the light. He misses sitting outside somewhere and watching it do nothing more or less complex than change colour. He misses hearing things like birds that respond to the way it changes, to leaves that respond to the way the air does the same thing: varies. He doesn't miss hearing the sounds of machinery and equipment designed to control and regulate them.

“And water,” Rey whispers, sensing his thoughts again. “The sounds of water... Ben? Can you hear them?”

He sets the empty goblet down on the circular table in the winery, closes his eyes and senses more carefully for her. He’s no idea how to actually do this. He hasn’t ever done it with intent, but the last time it happened she was on that island - this island - and yes he can hear the sounds of the water. He can smell the ocean again. And beneath the tough soles of his leather boots, when he shifts them now he can also feel ground that’s not yielding like the lawn of a green; it’s flat and hard like slate. Ben opens his eyes.

From the saddle he can see her, far below him at the flat landing stage where the Falcon is docked; the base of the ancient stone steps leading up to where he now stands, just an image. When she sees him, she disappears around the ship’s furthest side and from a distance Ben can also now see Chewie. He watches Rey return to take the Wokkiee by the arm and lead him inside. They’re giving him privacy, or maybe they’re giving it to Finn.

Somehow Ben knows the lie of it. He walks inside the First Jedi Temple, close enough to sense Finn now and he follows that, traversing the stairs until he reaches the mosaic. He can see him silhouetted, standing in the annex formed by the opening in the rock. It leads to the plinth on the high ledge overlooking the ocean on the western face.

Night has already fallen. Ben can’t feel it, but he senses it’s cold on the island. Finn wears the pilot’s jacket Ben remembers seeing when they fought in the snow on Starkiller. He stands leant against the stone wall, looking out at the view of the night. As Ben approaches silently, he can see that the sky is clear. The planet’s single moon is waxing, just a warm sliver now in a sky full of stars.

Ben’s unsure of what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He walks to the opposite side of the mouth of the stone cave and gazes out at the view of the silvery ocean, beneath the nighttime sky. And he just waits. Although Ben’s drunk have a bottle of blossom wine, he doesn’t know what he wants apart from to see him. Feeling the effects of the wine again, making him braver than he is, Ben looks across at Finn who is now looking back.

Even from here, he can see the lights in Finn's dark eyes, just as clear and reflective as he remembers. They fascinate Ben and he wants to be closer, even though he knows he can touch nothing here, including Finn; this is not like it is with Rey.

But before he can move it’s Finn who's closing the distance between them, just like he had on Crait. Ben opens his body, turning in to face him so his back is against the rock he can’t feel, only sense the jagged edges of, very vaguely through the Force, detecting the coldness of the stone. He’s not really here, only he is, just enough to see Finn. And say what he’s practised hundreds of times now alone.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Finn answers quietly, raising a hand to Ben’s bare chest and playing with the way it sinks inside the vision of it; the pad of the forefinger disappearing then reappearing as Finn stares down at it, frowning slightly. “How do you do this?”

“Meditation,” Ben replies, just as quietly.

“Where are you?” Finn asks, looking up.

Ben's heart skips.

“The Gallo Mountains,” he whispers, beginning to lose himself in Finn’s eyes.

“On Naboo?”

“I knew you’d remember them,” he murmurs. “Rey hadn’t even heard of them...”

“She wouldn’t, Ben, I only remember them from the training holos…”

Finn’s voice trails away and Ben senses he’s sad recalling it.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“It’s okay,” Finn forgives.

Finn lifts a hand to Ben’s face and strokes the tips of his first two fingers across Ben’s lower lip. Ben can sense the same strange feeling, like an echo or a dream of something he’s felt before and is recalling.

“This is so weird,” Finn murmurs, staring at his fingers, and then he looks up again at Ben. “Come here. _Really_ come here.”

Somehow, suddenly, everything Ben’s done today has led him to this moment. The war council meeting he’d suffered through this morning when both Hux and Phasma had openly underestimated his judgement, and dismissed his abilities as superstition. That’s the word they'd both used: _superstition._

The afternoon, when so angry he’d done so many supersets he’d nearly passed out from thirst before he’d stopped to replace his lost fluids.

And then the thought of fluids - drinking - led him to think again of Naboo, and of what he remembered was there: the winery. Where he could do something he thinks about doing a lot, but never, ever does.

He can fight through his pain. He can exercise through it all, too. When he’d thought of Naboo this afternoon, and decided then to travel there and re-connect with Rey, he thought he could also drink it away, that same pain. But he never thought for a moment that any of that - any of those inclinations - would lead him here, acquiescing so easily to this one.

Agreeing to physically go to this island, spend time around Rebels at the behest of a traitor. Agreeing to all that, with just this small answer. One word.

“Okay.”


	4. Seduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Finn hookup. It’s a little bit irreverent but mostly just nice and fluffy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No spoilers, but there is a pronking cock in this chapter (my favourite kind).

In the fading light he hands Rey the small crate of parts and plasma.

“How long will you stay?" she asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” Ben answers. “How long will it take you to fix the stuff?”

“Not long now I have all this,” she replies, rummaging happily through the contents of the box. “After it’s done we’ll run for supplies, we’ll be back in the morning.”

She gives him a glance.

“I’ll still be here,” Ben murmurs.

Rey starts to walk away but she doesn’t get far before pausing. A moment passes and then she turns back to give him one last look.

“Ben?” she whispers. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of it?”

“No,” he says, certain. “Not of that.”

She frowns, but he can’t seem to say anymore. Adjusting the swag on his shoulder he just walks to her instead, places a hand against her far cheek and pulls her into a half hug that ends with his lips against her hair. It’s nice to really hold her.

“If you need me, Ben…”

“I know,” he murmurs, feeling her body relax against his as she leans in, unable to hug him back for the crate in her hands but he senses she would if she could.

“Ben?”

“Yes?”

“Look after him. And look after you, too?”

He lets her go, roughs up her hair and then they divide, Rey completing the short walk to the Falcon and Ben beginning the trek up the ancient stone steps to the temple. He can feel the Dark Place calling, but something else calls louder.

He’s taken his time returning here but it's not because any of the stuff he’s just handed over to Rey was hard to acquire, the stuff to fix her saber and replace the failing part on his father’s ship.

Ben knows he’s just nervous, it’s as simple as that. Saying and doing are very different things and it had been all very well to commit to this, especially while drunk, but it’s quite another to follow through on promises.

 _One step at a time,_ Ben thinks to himself, now halfway up them.

When Ben reaches the top of the ancient stone path it’s dark. As he enters the temple the sounds of the ocean fade, and the heavy thud of his boots echoes against the stone floor. He hasn’t ever heard these sounds before. The last time, a week or so ago, his feet were silent and he was really only some kind of vision. But this time is very different.

Finn’s crouched by a fire he’s kindling on the western side of the mosaic, near the opening in the rock that overlooks the view of the dark ocean. As their eyes catch in the glow of the blaze Ben feels the corners of his mouth twitch in a smile he’s not really prepared yet to give, but it dashes across his face anyway and he looks down at his feet, shifting them awkwardly on the flagstones, trying to hide it.

“Don’t fight that,” Finn says, grinning. “Looks good on you.”

Cautiously, Ben floors the swag and moves towards the heat. Finn stands. In each of his hands he now holds a small, rough-hewn cup, and he offers one to Ben.

“You might not want to,” Finn says, the grin faltering for a moment, “I mean, I asked Rey, she thought it was kind of disrespectful...”

Ben snorts and looks at his feet again as Finn’s face lifts.

“...But I’ve kind of always thought that drinking’s not something you should ever do alone…”

Ben looks up at him.

“...And I don’t understand this place, the... reverence of it but, if you want to drink with me I’d really like that now, Ben, even though, you know, maybe it is kind of...”

Finn's voice fades away as Ben reaches out and their fingers touch briefly. Ben lets his own linger there as his eyes linger just as long on Finn. Then he takes the cup, lifts it to his philtrum and inhales the bristly aroma of the raw Kashyyykian spirit.

“Garrmorl,” he notes, raising an eyebrow.

“You don’t have to.”

Ben takes a small sip as Finn looks on.

“I brought it,” Ben murmurs, indicating the swag.

He drains the cup and sets it down on the stone lip of the mosaic, and together they flatten out the soft sleeping tent, leaving it unfastened at the strapping that lashes it closed down its longest side. Now it’s more like a mattress.

The chill on the air is hard to ignore, even though the heavy fabrics of Ben’s hardy clothes muffle most of it. The swag is dense and woolen though, the nap thick. Ben knows it's warm. He removes his boots, crawls on and reclines as his eyes return to the blaze.

At first Finn returns to tending it. Then after awhile he removes his own boots and jacket and stretches out alongside Ben, who's propped on his elbow, still watching the wood burn slow. From the corner of his eye he also watches Finn, nuzzling with a toe at his bare foot, feeling its warmth coupled with the pleasing temperature he still feels from the coals of the blaze. It all feels nice and Ben shifts on his hip as Finn moves a little closer.

The low light affects Ben then. It reminds him of the base on Crait. Something though, about all this, is taking him back much further than that. Ben wonders if Finn feels it too. He takes the weight off his forearm and lies down on his side, curving in towards Finn, still watching the flames.

“You okay?” Finn murmurs from above him.

Ben shifts his head a little so he can see Finn’s hands, his fingers held loose together and almost clasped but more relaxed than that. It’s not a closed gesture, like you might deem a clasp. It’s not a clasp at all, really. It’s more like his own were on Crait, before Finn had reached for him. Torn between two actions.

He senses it in Finn; a slight hesitation. Very nervously, Ben reaches out a hand to him and Finn takes it as now he lies down too, next to Ben, and pulls the cautious hand firm to his chest, tucking it in near his heart. Now both curled inwards, they face each other and Ben watches the flames dance across the surfaces of Finn’s dark eyes.

“How did you do what you did?” Ben asks.

Finn’s gaze flicks around his face and a soft crease forms between his brows.

“At Tuanul,” Ben adds, sensing Finn’s confusion as his eyes move to linger on his mouth.

Ben shifts his body and Finn inches in, Ben’s hand still pressed to his chest.

“How did you _not_ do it?” Finn tests.

Ben’s hand flexes, jerking in defense as though by instinct, but Finn is already off the bedding, prepared for it. Before Ben completes the reflex Finn’s bringing both their hands to the far side of Ben’s body, pressing his fist gently into the nap of the swag, level with his shoulder. Then he lets Ben’s hand go and leans back, testing the physical boundary, hesitating again as though waiting. Ben lies still in submission, waiting too.

“Can I kiss you?” Finn whispers, his eyes flicking across Ben’s face.

“Yes,” Ben breathes.

Finn leans over him again and places his mouth to Ben’s in a single soft kiss before drawing away. Ben reaches for him, his fingers finding the skin at the edge of his jaw. Finn leans in again and the fingers travel around to the back of his neck. With Finn’s mouth against his lips once more, Ben begins to stroke the nape of that neck. He feels the heat from the fire’s coals warming his toes while another heat builds not quite so far away as that.

Finn opens his mouth around Ben’s lower lip and plies once there slowly, then a second time. Ben’s knees have opened and when Finn kneads again he feels Finn’s right thigh settle above his. The heat in his groin becomes a faint ache and Ben shifts his hips.

“Is this okay?” Finn murmurs, drawing away just enough to say it, but not so far that Ben can’t feel the faint movement of his lips as they form the words that are checking on him.

“Yes,” Ben breathes, his fingers still behind Finn’s head, stroking at him, and now they pull Finn down.

As they start to kiss again, still slow and explorative, Ben’s palm spreads across the back of Finn’s skull, cradling, his thumb massaging the follicles of hair, feeling the textures of it. Their eyes meet as their mouths work away at each other until Finn’s tongue begins to lick at Ben’s, and he licks back.

Ben closes his eyes, losing himself in the feeling of Finn inside his mouth and after minutes of just this, Ben’s mind drifts to the times he’s thought of Finn when he’s been alone. He works his mouth away and tilts his neck, his palm still fondling the back of Finn’s head. Finn’s mouth dips in response to the way Ben’s opened his body, and it starts then to kiss at the skin beneath Ben’s hair. Ben sighs Finn’s name.

Yearning for more, he works his mouth back and their eyes connect again. Ben’s tongue licks at Finn’s lower lip then slides inside it, searching. His breath has grown heavy, and he can feel beneath the hand he’s pressed to Finn’s chest the rapid heartbeat under the shirt Finn wears. Ben fingers absentmindedly at the place where the V of the shirt’s neck exposes the skin of his chest. Finn draws his mouth away from Ben for a moment, but his warm breath is still close enough to fall soft on Ben’s cheek.

They start another deep kiss. Finn moves his thigh slowly along Ben’s until the top curve of his trousered upper quad touches very lightly against his groin. When Ben feels it the ache in him grows. He pushes up at the solid muscle, rubbing against Finn as their mouths start to work with more assurance. A faint moan escapes Ben, and Finn responds, rubbing back with his thigh and bringing his hand now to Ben’s chest.

The hand descends his body gradually, ending the journey by curving around his hip, cupping around his arse and giving him a gentle squeeze over the leather of his fitted trousers. Ben moans softly into Finn’s mouth again and watches the warm lights of the fire flicker its reflection, like a lull into safety. The hand squeezes again and their eyes stay met until Ben’s lids flutter closed. Finn’s mouth moves around and inside his, and they’re very deft movements by now.

Captured by the feeling, he lets Finn’s hand massage his glute for minutes as the ache in him reaches a level he didn’t previously know. Ben’s hips begin a slow grind against Finn’s, as a search for relief begins in him too.

Finn draws away again, nuzzling his face to Ben’s as he grinds back while trailing the hand that’s been squeezing his arse to his upper thigh, sliding it up, over his groin and slipping it inside the hem of his vest. Finn rests his palm on the place where the band of Ben’s trousers meets his abs, and fingers at it while Ben looks up at him, his mouth slack and his eyes locked on Finn’s full upper lip.

“You know, you’re really gentle,” Finn murmurs, as Ben’s gaze flicks between his full lips and the seductive eyes, which have by now also captured him. “I didn’t expect that.”

Finn’s expression is soft. He’s not accusing, it’s only a comment, but Ben is silent. Through the pressure that’s built in him he can feel something starting to jam inside, in a different place, as pleasure starts to blinker him, and affect the things he wants to say. But the other thing still niggles, the something else that’s in the way too. In the way of what he wants to say, affecting not what he wants to do - he knows what that is - but the idea he can.

If he tried, could he explain it? Should he not say it at all? Should he just act like…

“Ben?” Finn whispers.

His stomach flips.

“Have you been with anyone?”

Ben hesitates.

“You don’t have to say,” Finn whispers again.

Ben pulls him close, dipping his face beneath Finn’s jaw.

“No,” he mouths, with his lips to the skin of Finn’s neck, not even sure he’s done that now; perhaps it’s only been the very quietest thought that was ever inside his head, buried deep inside the fear of letting it go.

But he must have mouthed it, maybe it was breath, even sound, because now Finn is saying, “That’s okay,” into his hair.

And Ben’s eyes brim because that was the thing he couldn’t say to Rey, but somehow he just has to Finn, and Finn’s saying things back.

“I don’t wanna do anything you don’t wanna do, Ben, okay?”

Finn is saying things back that are re-filling Ben with things he knows, but hasn’t remembered for a long time, so long they're almost forgotten.

Shaking out a breath, his eyes still brimming, the jammed thing clunks back to life. The heat in him overtakes the fear and he’s straining inside his garments, his leathers suddenly far too tight, uncomfortable. Ben shifts his shoulders and hips, and then his arms leave Finn, and Ben’s unfastening the wide belt around his vest.

Finn’s hands are on his clothing, running their way beneath his upper garment, over his abs and pecs. Lifting the quilted fabric, helping him shed that. Ben lies back and searches for Finn with his eyes and mouth and hands as Finn removes his own shirt then stops.

“Man,” he breathes. “This.”

The ache in Ben's lower body is leading him now and it does not for a moment appreciate pausing. It’s severely bothered by this interruption but that’s all it is - a brief pause - because Finn’s returned to Ben's body now, mouth on his collarbone, tongue licking across the upper definitions of his pecs, just below the leather strap fastening the wings on his sleeves.

Ben watches, adoring the way Finn's hands trace the edges of the cuffs that bind and delineate his shoulders, then play with the ribbed and pleated textures down his arms, appreciating the contours beneath the fabric gilding his biceps and triceps.

 _“Damn,”_ Finn breathes.

He opens a hungry mouth around Ben’s in another deep kiss that forces his already hooded eyes to close and his hips to drive against Finn’s thigh again. Ben moans into his open mouth when he feels fingers flick across his nipples, and thrills go through him as Finn plays there gently, tweaking each before his mouth leaves Ben’s once more.

“Do you like this?” Finn whispers quickly, his eyes flicking to Ben’s, checking.

Ben’s breath is hitching and huffing now, and his shoulders shift as he arches his back with each of Finn’s light, teasing movements.

“Fuck yes,” he mumbles, watching Finn sink his mouth back to one of his pecs.

Ben’s slave now to the view he has of Finn’s lips, closed around one of his nipples, kissing slowly at first then biting softly. One hand reaches for the back of Finn’s head while the other travels rapidly down himself, straight to the seam of his leathers, desperate to unfasten and relieve the pressure that’s impossible to bear now as Finn tongues away at the other nipple.

Finn’s hand is there to meet his desperate forearm, his palm brushing first at the wrist, then the back of the hand; feeling the muscles and tendons tense and strain as Ben fumbles the fixings at first until a brief relief floods through him once he masters them, and his cock pronks to a length its been fighting to achieve since Finn first flattened him against the swag. And at last his hand is around it, and Finn’s is around the top of his inner thigh.

Ben’s ankles are spread, Finn's knees beneath his arse, snugging his hips as his hands move light around Ben's lower flanks, sending frissons across the skin and his eyes flick between Ben’s and his bared cock. Finn spreads his palms wide across Ben’s hips, his thumbs stroking at the band of the open trousers. Then he leans over Ben to whisper the words in his ear.

“I would really like to put my mouth around you now.”

Ben can do nothing more than mewl at the suggestion. He gapes at Finn and then without even trying his thoughts are inside his head.

 _I want that so much_.

Finn drives his tongue into Ben. Their teeth knock together. Finn hauls himself back, his breath ragged.

“You want it?” he breathes ragged, shifting his knees.

Ben’s cock throbs. He can almost feel himself verging already, suddenly feeling the build around the base of himself as he starts to imagine it; Finn’s full lips around him, cheeks hollowed, sucking so hard.

_I want your fucking lips around me, Finn._

Fear is forgotten as nothing but lust ignites then in Ben. He watches Finn descend his overwrought body, hypnotized by his own muscles as they strain for Finn while his mouth kisses in worship across his lower abs. Ben moans as Finn’s palms run around the inside of his pants and his heart almost fails him when Finn’s hands haul down the back yoke of his leathers, baring his arse and then somehow they’re off him as his stomach flips wild.

“Is that cold?”

 _“Fuck_ no,” Ben huffs, finding his voice as their bodies settle together again.

In another context Ben might wonder if this were a natural physical hierarchy. It probably is. Supreme Leaders should dominate. But Ben Solo doesn’t give a fuck about any of that shit anymore; the precum is already halfway down his length, it’s been there so long. As their eyes lock again, and Finn’s mouth returns to his lower body, he holds his breath as Finn nears his glans. Finn spreads his hands across the dark hairs at the base of Ben's rigid shaft, and he takes one final look up.

“Come in my mouth,” he says.

Then Ben watches the man who defied Kylo Ren on Tuanul - the traitor - extend his tongue, lick the precum from the base of his shaft all the way up to the tip of his dick, and finally sink Ben’s grateful cock deep inside his generous mouth, all the way in to the back of his throat.

And it doesn’t take Ben long. Hardly any time at all. Finn lifts his magnificent lips along him and Ben can feel it start. His hips push hard as Finn sinks down his length again, one hand around him now as his lips rub firm against his lower bell and his tongue presses flat to his glans.

“Oh, _fuck...”_  

Ben calls Finn’s name into the heights of the first Jedi Temple as his cum gushes, the warmth of it collecting inside the lips sealed around his head. And spreading out from his base, throughout his whole body, is a feeling that’s better than anything he could have ever made alone in himself as the pressure that’s built there at last has somewhere to go: straight down Finn’s arid throat.

Finn holds Ben down firm as the waves of his pleasure drive his head back and roll his eyes closed. Finn’s mouth is at his own and then their foreheads are pressed together.

“I’m sorry,” Ben huffs, “I couldn’t stop it...”

Finn holds him for so long, then rolls to his back and Ben, big as he is, rolls with him.

“Do you feel good?” Finn murmurs into his hair as Ben curls inside the nurturing shell of Finn's powerful and protective body. “Because that’s all that matters to me now, Ben.”

The fire burns lower and lower, and Finn and the onset of sleep embrace his body at once. Neither of them are willing to let Ben go. So he closes his eyes and he lets them both take him away to another place that's called, but to where, until now, he's never actually been.


	5. Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Finn wake up together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took awhile, these chapters are getting longer! Thanks to mrsmancuspia and leoba for talking through ideas for this chapter with me, and to the wine I drank this evening which gave me the courage to hang the consequences of inconsequential typos and inconsistent plots and just freaking hit 'Post Without Preview'. I hope you enjoy this filthy, fluffy chapter. Thanks for reading it xx

With the pads of his fingers Ben presses down into the soft nap of the swag, working them gently and with speculation, and slowly inching towards consciousness. He opens his eyes and looks out into the half-light, orienting until his sight catches on something bright; one or two warp threads wound slightly too wide but woven through the matrix of the textile anyway.

They rise above the rest to catch the light and Ben’s gaze follows their silvery tones to the crest of Finn’s shoulder, until with the smallest flick his gaze lifts.

“Hey,” Finn whispers to Ben, smiling when their eyes meet. “Were you dreaming?”

Ben nestles his cheek against his own forearm. Then he rises slowly as his faintly groggy head adjusts to the shift in axis. He leans over and presses his mouth to Finn’s; it’s been too long between kisses.

“Not a dream,” he murmurs, his top lip lingering close enough to feel the faint bristle of Finn’s morning shadow. “You’re still here.”

“What did you dream?” Finn whispers, glowing.

“I was by an ocean,” Ben murmurs. “Not this one though, a different sea…”

He can still hear the water as his eyes trace around the shapes of Finn’s face in the semi-darkness. 

“It was really warm... I was on this rock beneath the sun and there was this tide as blue as the sky…”

He didn’t wake from the dream with any real kind of intent. The urge to kiss Finn had just kind of arrived, had taken him, just like the urge to share his vision and now Finn is taking him, too.

His lips press up against Ben’s mouth. Finn’s broad palms and strong arms embrace his body, both assuring and assured. Every movement of Finn’s possesses purpose, a quiet belief. Ben knows it's there, he can feel it; inside Finn there's a force.

Still wearing nothing but sleeves, Ben allows Finn’s confident hands to work the last of his garments from him, unsheathing the length of each of his long arms until Ben’s naked and watching Finn remove his own shirt for the second time in less than a day. And then he's unfastening his trousers, removing those, too.

Vaguely Ben wonders when and why Finn dressed again, and if that means he's ventured out since Ben fell asleep last night, but mostly it’s just the bare expanses of their bodies that affect and fascinate him now; the way their skin is met in so many places. Ben inhales Finn’s familiar scent, sweet as Chandrilan grass.

Half-formed thoughts start to fade about the imagery he woke with, ideas he’d like to piece together but can't because he’s losing control, but he doesn’t mind in this context, not here with Finn. It feels nothing but good to lose his grip now on control here alone with Finn.

His mass reassures Ben as he lies beneath it. His hands slide over Finn's well-defined forms, appreciating the strength but also an unexpected outward softness about him that Ben is beginning to know better. A pliancy about the smooth surfaces of his hands and mouth, reinforced by their expressions of affection for Ben and the gentle and generous ways in which Finn holds and kisses his body.

And there’s both softness and strength inside Finn too, things Ben hasn’t ever wholly acknowledged or fully understood perhaps until very recently, although he’s felt them, sensed them both there and especially the strength.

Known it wasn’t just present in the thick traps, delts and biceps, or the knots of muscle in his lower back and the tight, contoured cheeks of his arse. There’s power running much deeper than just the physical attributes alone. An essence that draws Ben, like a call, of which he's heard many, but few do what this does. Few give back, and they never give back like this.

Finn begins to work his way down Ben’s long frame, kissing and licking at the skin as he descends it, sucking at his nipples when he reaches those, and his fingers continue to linger on them even when the rest of Finn has moved well beyond.

“You  _really_ like this,” Finn murmurs as he does it, looking up at him and smiling as Ben shifts his neck against the swag to watch, arching his back as thrills shoot all the way through him.

Ben’s breath escapes in a sigh, the end of which hitches in his throat. Finn kisses further down his body and Ben’s eyes close when he moves his mouth around his stiffening cock, moaning as Finn licks his length from base to tip before closing his lips around Ben’s crown and sucking at him gently.

“Finn,” Ben whispers.

He lifts his head and their eyes catch in a visual check. Ben exhales a soft moan of assent and slides his hand down to Finn’s face, pressing fingertips to his lips. Shifting on his knees Finn pulls Ben closer. His broad palms find the back of Ben's upper thighs and they start to stroke him. A new urge starts to build in Ben as Finn deepens the pressure of the slow massage he gives now to Ben’s upper abductors with his thumbs, inching them inwards.

“Do you like _this?”_ Finn asks.

Ben hums so Finn lowers his mouth and leaves a trail of careful kisses across his balls. A warm palm caresses him and then Finn starts to lick. Ben closes his eyes and his hips start to move as the palm adjusts him and Finn’s tongue explores until Ben feels its warmth beneath his sac, licking at his taint. The tongue flattens out in a slow massage and Ben moans Finn’s name. Finn lifts his head just enough to look at him.

“Don’t stop,” Ben whispers, as he sinks his hand to his cock.

"Only for a minute," Finn whispers back, rising on his knees.

He strokes at the back of Ben’s hand, working his fingers beneath the fist. He briefly takes over the hand job, for just long enough to close his palm around the crown and rub across Ben’s glans, slicking his fingers with the precum. Then the fingers find his perineum and finish at his rim.

Ben’s stomach flips as Finn begins a slow massage around his anus. He keens, and while the fingers hold steady Finn moves the rest of his powerful body back up within range of Ben’s mouth.

 _“Do_ that,” Ben urges, catching his lower lip with his teeth for a moment before letting him go. “I  _want_ you to.”

Finn kisses him deeply and with the tip of his slicked forefinger applies a gentle pressure to Ben while his tongue works its way between his lips. When Ben accepts him Finn again presses gently as Ben takes him inside, slowly. Finn starts a soft curl and Ben moans into his mouth.

“Do you want more?” Finn whispers after a while, drawing his mouth away and their eyes connect again.

“Yes,” Ben whimpers, the urge inside him growing as he pulses against Finn’s practised finger.

“You’ve done this before, right? To yourself?”

Ben closes his eyes in admission and clenches around Finn, wondering if he’ll even last the duration of this conversation.

“It’s okay,” Finn breathes, still curling at Ben with the pad of his finger.

He kisses Ben deeply and his tongue licks inside his mouth again before drawing away.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, that’s all...”

“You won’t,” Ben swears, his voice still only a whisper, opening his eyes and they plead with Finn’s, still vulnerable from the admission he’s made; Finn’s care is soothing the shame and the guilt he feels in sharing it though, a thing so personal.

“You’re so gentle, you  _won’t,”_ Ben repeats.

Finn smiles and Ben catches it, just before his eyes close once more. He exhales, arching his back as the pressure builds again; he’s trying to last for longer than he could last night, to slow the hand at his dick, but he needs relief. Finn’s kissing at his neck and he’s groaning. Ben knows he’s almost starting.

It’s not just what Finn does to his body that takes Ben to the edge of control. It’s the way he looks at him when he does it. When Ben’s eyes reopen and he sees them, their nearly liquid depths. And then it’s the sound of his voice and what it says, what it asks, that takes him over. How much attention Finn pays to Ben, to his pleasure, is impossible to bear, and if Finn says one more thing like that, with those eyes in that voice...

“That would hurt you,” he whispers. “If we had lube, though…”

“Ah,  _fuck,”_  Ben quits.

With those words the tension he’s been holding releases. At first, he tips his head back but the drive to watch is too strong. Ben stares at the ripe head of his dick as pearly white streams of his cum sluice in thickened rivers down his blushed length.

“I really like watching you,” Finn whispers, his mouth on his jaw when his body collapses back into the soft nap of the swag.

As Ben collects his breath Finn’s hands travel down his body until the tip of one finger touches to the new, sticky warmth at the base of his cock. Ben catches the scene from the corner of his vision, and then their eyes catch, too.

There’s another look there now, a kind of wry, half-smile that Ben’s never seen. He senses Finn, wanting to know what it means, and when the whole thought emerges Ben tips his head back against the swag and he laughs.

“You’ve fucking  _done_  that?”

Finn raises his eyebrows.

“Did you just  _laugh_ at me?"

“Don’t change the subject,” Ben laughs again. “You have actually fucking done that, haven’t you?”

The smile on Finn’s face broadens and Ben snorts.

“Holy  _shit.”_

 _“Holy shit?”_ Finn says, but he’s grinning now. “How nice have I been to you for this whole damn time, and the  _first_  chance you get you _laugh_ at me, and I haven’t even said _…”_

“Holy fucking shit,” Ben chuckles again, shaking his head.

“What?”

 _“What?”_  Ben chokes. “What do you mean  _what?_  Don’t you fucking lie there and pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, _Solo.”_

“Fuck you,” Ben laughs out again, but he reaches up for the back of Finn’s head and draws him in closer.

“I wanna make _love_ to you,” Finn breathes, the words a mere brush across Ben’s lower lip.

“Holy shit,” Ben repeats, still smiling and nuzzling Finn’s face with the tip of his nose. “I want you to do that.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” Ben urges, heart pounding.

Finn’s eyes don’t leave Ben’s as he repositions between his spread knees and draws them up gently. The slow massage at his rim returns, still slick with precum, and Finn enters him again with a slow, patient finger, and then another one. Ben exhales, watching Finn as with his other hand he strokes himself until he's long and hard and thick, and for so long now massaging his gate that Ben's begun to gape.

He remembers the first time he ever laid eyes on Finn. The way he’d stood there, armored in the desert heat and dust, feet spread and shoulder-width apart, hips squared. Squared to Kylo Ren exactly like they're squared now to Ben as Finn withdraws his fingers from Ben's softened arsehole and with his hand collects the pearlescent spend that still patterns his lower abdomen.

“Promise me,” Finn murmurs, slicking the head of himself with Ben’s cum. “I need you to say it.”

“I promise,” Ben breathes.

Finn presses the warm head of himself against Ben’s pliant anus.

“You’ll tell me if you need to stop.”

“Finn, I fucking swear it, I will...”

Very slowly Finn increases the pressure and waits, his hand just behind the crown of his cock, Ben’s breath and body stilled. Slowly, over minutes, Ben accepts him and Finn fills him up as they gaze at each other until at last Finn's in, all the way to his balls. He leans over and places his palms down against the nap of the swag, at either side of Ben’s broad shoulders, their eyes still met. Then Finn starts to move once inside Ben, pulling back, waiting, then slowly advancing again.

“Are you okay, Ben?” he breathes.

“Fuck, yes,” Ben breathes back.

Finn drops his head and starts to fuck Ben. His thrusts are long, slow and still smooth. Ben can feel himself pulse every time Finn's bell moves tight across his prostate. It’s building new heat beneath the base of his own cock and he sighs Finn’s name and tilts his head back as a light sweat breaks across his skin.

“You feel _so_ good,” Finn breathes into his ear.

“Fuck,” Ben breathes.

“Does it feel good?”

Ben just moans and reaches for his dick again.

“Tell me when you’re gonna come... Ben?”

“Maybe now,” he huffs

The controlled rhythm Finn’s found inside Ben quickens. Ben just groans and pulls himself to another finish, tipping back his head and once again he finds his gaze compelled to watch his own cum flow, thinner this time but still coinciding with the release through his body of pleasure. Ben's hands slide beneath Finn's arms, to the tensing muscles of his upper back, and Ben feels the rhythm break as Finn arrives, too.

Anchoring his hips firm against Ben, moaning his name, then withdrawing and sinking his mouth to Ben's neck, biting softly then salving the grazes with his soft lips while Ben holds him tight. They lie like that, paused for minutes and longer, the spend between them glazing their bodies, and Ben almost falls asleep as he senses Finn at the same dreamy place.

“Ben?”

“Mm?”

Carefully, Finn adjusts his body, and rolls to his side. Ben mirrors him at first, his hands not wanting to let Finn go, but eventually Ben nestles slightly above Finn, working one thigh between his and lifting himself on his forearm so as to gaze down into Finn’s dark eyes. They are hooded and sleepy but still attentive, and there’s something else there that pulls at Ben’s heart.

“You’re sad,” he whispers. “Why?”

“I’m not,” Finn says, smiling.

Ben frowns.

“You are, Finn,” Ben whispers again. “I can feel it, you don't need to lie...”

Finn doesn’t say anything.

“Tell me,” Ben breathes, nuzzling him. "Please."

“I don’t want you to go,” Finn whispers.

“Go where?”

“Back.”

“Who says I am?”

Finn is silent for a moment and then he says, “I need to say something.”

Ben senses he knows what it is. Finn’s voice is very faint.

“I want to tell it to you, but I can’t...”

Ben stares at Finn, still sensing as more minutes pass by in silence, full of Finn just laying there and Ben just laying there with him. 

“You’re scared,” Ben whispers.

“It’s scary how you know things like that,” Finn whispers back. “But I’m glad you know them.”

“Why are you scared?” Ben asks.

“Because I’ve told people before,” he whispers again. “But then things have happened and then it’s really hurt. When you tell people things and then things happen to  _them,_ it really hurts.”

“You’re afraid to hurt,” Ben whispers, after a moment or two.

And Ben realizes then that Finn is not going to say it, and that the thing he says he needs to say is going to go unsaid. But Ben has other ideas.

"I know some things,” he begins. “That I’m not going back, that's one.”

He lifts on his forearm and gently places his mouth to Finn's lower lip, and then to the cheeks that are being made slick by the tears that are starting in Finn. And some of the pieces start to fit together at last for Ben, as he realizes what it is; the force inside Finn that draws him, that gives Ben something. Courage.

“And you don’t have to say anything back, Finn, and I understand why you don't...”

But he does say it back. He does say the thing.

“I love you, Ben," he whispers.

Ben kisses all the wet places, pressing closed lips to as many as he can and it doesn’t dry the tears but Ben senses it does soothe Finn, and so he keeps going, he keeps talking; Ben says his own thing. A thing that's been hard to say back for many, many years.

“I love you, too."


	6. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Finn wrestle on the shore of the ocean, the Dark Place continues to call and Rey intervenes when hope starts to fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a hardcore fluff warning on this chapter! There’s also a reference here to @harpiaharpyja’s fic [Broken Accidental Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268699/chapters/38042000) (use of the term ‘standoff’).  
>    
> Thanks to @leoba for hooking me up once more with inspirational imagery and many people in the two-halves and multi-shippers Discord groups who all helped me write various details in this chapter. I’m very grateful to all who've so patiently tolerated my embarrassing SWST questions over the past few weeks. Extra love!
> 
> This is the final instalment of the story proper from Ben’s POV. Epilogues will follow in the coming months from other characters POVs (and probably some more from Ben’s too) so please stay subscribed if you’d like to receive the notifications.
> 
> Thank you for reading this work. I love finnlo so much and it’s meant a great deal to have some readers who do too! There’s some super-drama here which was fun to plan and write. Enjoy! xx

Ben braces before plunging below the sundering surface of the sea, knowing already how cold it is inside. Months ago Rey had stood nearby on the plateau in the shadows of the Falcon sheltering from rain. Seaspray wet them then and now the whole foaming ocean has soaked both he and Finn.

Only the appearances of Ahch-To’s oceans are troubled. Beneath them the water is calm and a strange sense of stillness captures Ben’s curiosity. The distraction draws his attention away from the burn of the cold and the pain planes and becomes like a fog, inside which the edges of himself dissolve into sea, boundless; just thoughts in the darkness as the Dark Place calls to him again and eventually so does his body, and his heart.

Ben re-emerges for breath then looks to the shore and the rocks to which Finn’s already escaped the tumult of the waves, his bare body glowing in the growing light of morning. Ben swims back to the shallows and clambers from the sea. Water pools on the slate when he reaches it and Finn reclines partway.

Ben moves astride him, thighs still dripping and the men watch the water course at first between their bodies then slowly ebb. Finn reaches for Ben’s lower legs and circles them with shoring fingers. He drops down to his knees, straddles Finn’s hips and leans against his chest, flattening the back of his lover to the island’s stone.

“Say it,” he murmurs. “Say I’m yours.”

Ben runs his palm over the damp skin of Finn’s torso.

“You’re _mine,_ Ben.”

He curves it to Finn’s ample trap.

“Say you’re letting me do this.”

“I’m _letting_ you do this. Don’t forget it.”

He shifts the palm outwards to Finn’s thicc delt and then to his hard bicep.

“You’re letting me dominate you,” Ben whispers.

“Yes,” Finn says. “I am.”

Ben smiles and spreads his already sizeable girth across the width of Finn’s chest and moors his forearms to the smooth surface of rock on either side of their bodies. For a moment, from above him, Ben stares down at the reflections of light in Finn’s eyes, then he lowers his face and licks beneath his earlobe, kissing down the length of his neck and then across his throat.

“Try to escape,” Ben whispers.

“Why,” Finn sighs, “Would I wanna do that?”

The words through his larynx make soft vibrations against Ben’s lips.

“Just try,” he coaxes, kissing along the pronounced curve of Finn’s right shoulder now, tasting the salt of the ocean still lacing his skin. “Just try and do it.”

_“Try?”_

“Actually, no,” Ben murmurs, smiling and still trailing kisses, now so far down his upper body he can brush his lips over Finn’s firming right nipple. _“Do it.”_

“You think I can’t,” Finn says slowly as it dawns on him.

“I’m stronger than you,” Ben murmurs again, and then he extends the tip of his tongue and starts to lap at the nipple.

Still pinned, Finn arches his back beneath Ben.

“No you’re not,” he breathes. “You’re not stronger than me.”

“ _Ur-ruhve_ it,” Ben slurs back, tongue still engaged with the nipple.

“ _What?”_ Finn chuckles, as still he wriggles _._ _“Prove_ it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Finn snorts.

“You’re not even _ready,”_ he chides, with a husk in his voice and the sound makes Ben’s heart race as his own breath starts to catch in his throat, and match Finn’s for texture.

“You make it way too easy, when you’re so busy doing all this to me, Ben...”

He stops licking and lifts his head, re-spanning the width of Finn’s chest and adjusting the position of his forearms on the slate, piling his weight behind his shoulders and bracing like he did in the ocean. Ben stares down again at a caged Finn and waits.

“Do it,” he says again. _“Escape me.”_

At first he feels nothing but pliant hands gliding up his flanks. They slip beneath the gaps made by his flexed biceps, and snug around his upper arms for a moment. Thumbs hook briefly in the nooks of his pits before Finn brings them around and flattens his palms either side of Ben’s chest, pressing up against his pecs with the heel of each.

Slowly resistance builds between their bodies as Finn applies steady pressure from beneath and Ben aches for more. It feels good to push back. It feels good to use the power of his body like this, to bear down like this on Finn.

“Come _on,”_ Finn huffs, as Ben’s left forearm lightens against the slate. “You’re not even _hardly_ trying…”

Ben transfers weight, pressing his left-side down hard to try and regain the advantage he’s lost, but Finn moves too and pushes against Ben’s right, exploiting the weakness he’s just exposed.

Finn commands his right side now and the jaw Ben’s set with the effort caves in a smile when his dominant arm gives. He sinks his face to Finn’s and they catch each other by the mouth in a kiss Ben doesn’t mind at all. Finn as good as wins the wrestle and Ben’s heart leaps.

“Do it again,” he says, the smile on his face still plain as the day around them when eventually he draws his lips away, but it takes some time. The kiss is long.

Ben lifts his upper body and settles over Finn and the same resistance beneath him builds as strong hands return to his pecs. He bears down again as Finn drives up, their eyes caught. This time Ben senses, applying just enough Force-halt now to slow the upwards momentum, and then just enough more to stop it. He Force-holds Finn there beneath him like prey.

 _“Not_ fair, Solo,” Finn huffs in protest.

“Sure it is,” Ben murmurs. “We didn’t agree to any _rules…”_

“I need... compensation,” Finn strains.

“That’s fine,” Ben whispers, using the Force to soften Finn’s arms so they fold and he can now reach him. “I can accommodate for that.”

Still Force-holding, Ben kisses down his neck again and works his way to the edge of Finn’s clavicle, kissing inwards until he reaches the shallow of the notch at the base of his neck. He slips his tongue inside it and wonders for how much longer they can feasibly stay here together like this, still naked in the cool sea air that doesn’t feel cool now at all.

Ben tongues again at Finn’s nipple as he shifts his knees and lifts his body so one of his hands can find his own length. He rubs along his own cock as he kisses down Finn’s sternum, knees scraping against the unyielding surface of the slate as he goes, but just like the cold of the ocean that sensation is dull compared to the others he’s feeling now.

Ben’s vaguely aware of the sounds Finn’s making as he reaches his belly and works his lips across his hard abdominals, appreciating the scent and texture of the skin drawn tight around them. The kisses he’s placing are less and less carefully formed as he nuzzles needy lips through the hairs at the base of Finn’s circumcised penis, different to his own, and that difference fascinates Ben.

It’s a beautiful dick, slightly blushed at the head, and even as Finn is now - stiff from the foreplay but not yet hard - Ben can see every svelte definition. The sensual and intricate curves of the bell-shaped crown as it swells around the edges are smooth and hypnotic, like the undulating forms of waves. He yearns to lick around each one, and discover every nuanced texture.

It’s curious how such a strong body can still be so intricate, can still appear so prone as Finn’s is now, laid out bare before him on the slate. It’s tender and delicious and it’s turning Ben on so much he almost needs to stop. He glances up at Finn as he wraps his hand around his lover’s thiccness and pulls up exploratively, unsure of how much strength of his own to use, but Ben knows what Ben likes, so Ben starts there.

Finn’s eyes taper, so Ben keeps going, and when Finn's cock is long and its head is straining Ben presses soft lips to its warm and weeping tip, then opens his mouth and slides the lips down around it. Still on his knees he gently sucks, eyes still on Finn’s, one hand around his man and the other still tending to himself, still frisking. When Finn starts to moan Ben starts to wonder if now he’s in some kind of limbo.

Is he perhaps unable to face what’s bound to happen next? The realities of leaving, not just what but the means by which he will? And the words he and Finn said earlier to each other in the temple: can he take those back? Can he change his mind? Does he want to?

When his cheeks hollow out again, Ben doesn’t think he wants to change anything as Finn moans in approval each time he’s sucked, and once more when his hands stroke reassuringly at the back of Ben's head after he finally lets the Force-hold go and Finn is free to move, as before. He moves on Ben, pressing down firm to the back of his skull as his hips lift and Ben’s eyes widen when Finn's length reaches all the way to the back of Ben's throat.

“I’m nearly there,” Finn says in a breath. “You mightn’t wanna....”

But Ben just opens his jaw even wider and sucks at Finn harder, because he knows for sure now that the only thing he doesn’t want is to change his mind about anything they’ve just done here, as Finn calls Ben’s name and Finn’s warm spend fills his mouth. Ben swallows him and Finn’s flavour lingers on his palate. Ben pulls himself off, his own cum pooling on the surface of the slate between his sweetheart’s inner thighs as their mouths connect again, and they kiss in another fever until Ben draws away, happy.

“Finn?”

“Mm?”

Ben lowers his head to Finn's shoulder, curls himself in to his body and stares out over the hard point of his nipple at the still turbulent surface of the jade-coloured sea before them.

“Wanna go?”

Earlier they’d emerged from the temple, semi-dressed and hungry, Finn carrying their heavier garments and the swag set across Ben’s shoulders. On a slow trek back to the docked ships, they’d descended to the ocean and walked south around the coast to the island’s most south-western point, to wash where the warmth from the suns in the eastern sky could still reach them, but little else, and where they could still be alone and hidden, but not so far from Rey.

“I’m ready if you are," Finn says.

Now they stand and dress, then they pull on boots and Ben looks down at the swag, stalling. Slowly he reaches for the strapping, hefting the rolled sleeping tent off the slate and shouldering its bulk once more. He looks at Finn, nervous there’s nothing more left here to do, nothing else to prolong the inevitable, or postpone the leaving.

Finn turns and walks from the shore, climbing the small incline that leads to the plateau just out of sight, where Ben knows both the Falcon and his own ship are waiting, and when Finn reaches the top he turns around to look for Ben, but he’s still stalled at the shoreline.

From the top of the hill Finn extends his hand.

“Come on. There’s still breakfast, I can smell it. Chewie’s a really good cook.”

Ben takes a very shallow breath that he doesn’t really mean. He means it to be very deep. He means to draw in so much air that the words he’s about to say will sound strong and assertive and commanding, like a leader. One he still thinks he should be.

But the nerves have begun to cripple him. His lungs are starting to tighten. He stands there immobile and hating himself for it.

“I can’t leave here with you,” Ben mumbles.

Finn’s face hasn’t fallen; in fact his jaw has squared, he’s set it. He lifts his chin and shakes his head, but neither of these are actions performed in defeat. They're defiant.

“No,” Finn says.

“What?”

“No,” Finn repeats. “I’m not letting you say that to me. We’re ready to leave. And you _can_ leave, Ben. So, let’s go.”

The island’s cold is all around Ben, but he’s no longer inside an ocean. There’s a tide inside him that’s risen so high everything in him is freezing up, corroding the gears. Jamming them.

“I can’t,” Ben repeats.

It’s not the Dark Place that’s telling him that, it’s just his fucking nerves.

“This is not a game, Ben,” Finn says. “We’re not playing anymore.”

“I know.”

“Then, _walk.”_

The tone of Finn’s voice had been even, but there’s a menace in it now - it’s not a thing Ben’s used to - and for some reason the sudden change increases his anxiety. It’s unexpected - Finn’s cross - and yet it’s also much too familiar, that tone. The shaky grip he's had on control slips. Ben snaps.

“What the fuck am I gonna do over there?” he flaps, thrusting his chin in the direction of the top of the hill and beyond it.

“What do you _wanna_ do?” Finn tests.

Ben throws the swag to the slate.

“You know what I don’t wanna do? I _don’t_ wanna board some ship I hate and sit around inside it playing happy fucking families.”

The hand Finn’s held extended throughout this whole exchange closes now to make a finger, and it points straight at Ben.

“You no longer have any family on that ship,” he slices. “And that's _your_ fault, Solo, _yours.”_

Ben sucks in the air around him so fast it makes a hissing sound.

 _“Fuck you,”_ he whispers.

Finn is slowly shaking his head, the finger still pointed. But he doesn’t say anything else, and the silence - the absence of more of Finn’s cold hard words - is more than Ben can bear.

 _“What?”_ he cries out in frustration. “Huh? _What the fuck’s with that?_ Pointing at _me?_ And not saying _anything now?_ You wish you hadn’t fucking _said_ that? Huh? Are you _sorry_ now? Because you _can’t_ take that back, Finn!”

“No,” Finn says in answer. “No I’m _not_ sorry, and no I _don’t_ wish I hadn’t said that, I’m _glad_ I said it, it’s the truth. And I _don’t_ wanna take it back because in case you’ve forgotten, _I don’t have any damn family on that ship either, Ben._ On _any damn ship,_ thanks to you and the First Order.”

“I’ve _left_ that.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

 _“Yes,”_ Ben spits out again.

“Well then quit acting so damn sorry for yourself because you’re not the only one who’s lost things, and who wants to move on from those things but _can’t.”_

Ben wishes it was Rey. _Why_ is it Finn, stood at the top of that hill? Why isn’t it _her?_ If he was stood in front of Rey now she would never say things like this. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to, she was terrible at communicating, just like him; Ben can’t communicate effectively with anybody _ever_ like this, with words. He can’t _explain_ things like this, he’s not his _mother._ He’s not fucking _articulate_ and he’s no fucking orator, either. 

And he can’t defend himself now from this barrage. Ben glares at Finn and then he sees it - he’s released his hand and dropped it - and now he drops his head as well and he turns his back on Ben.

But just before he does, something happens in his eyes; they cloud, but not with sadness. A song is playing that only Finn can hear and Ben knows whose it is. He glares harder at Finn’s defiant leather-clad back as it disappears down the other side of the hill, and Ben is left alone by the shoreline.

“Where the _fuck_ do you think you’re going?” he yells.

Tears prickle at Ben’s eyes, he’s furious. At Finn. And _Rey._ And he’s just as furious at himself, because Kylo Ren would’ve stormed that hill a long fucking time ago.

 _No,_ Ben mourns, knees weakening. _He would never have let either of them go in the first place._

_Ben?_

_“Fuck off,”_ he spits out again, as he tries to push Rey’s voice from his head but can’t; he’s never been able. “I _don’t_ wanna do this now with you, it’s none of your fucking _business...”_

 _Actually, it is,_ she thinks back. _You’ve basically just implied that this is somehow my fault, and that’s a pile of shit._

Ben continues to glower at the empty Finn-less hill, hands clenched and nails digging hard into the heels of his palms, but he’s listening.

 _And don’t,_ Rey continues, _You dare even try and give me any of that self-pitying garbage you just gave to Finn. You’re better than that, Ben Solo, I know it. And if you won’t listen to him…_

 _I heard him,_ Ben thinks back.

 _Shut up, Ben,_ she thinks. _This is not the time for you to talk._

“I’m _not_ talking,” he starts to say. “I was _thinking_ those…”

 _They’ve tracked your fucking fighter, they’re coming,_ Rey interrupts again. _And I can’t wait for the pair of you to resolve this for very much longer. So start fucking moving, Ben..._

Does he care? Ben feels his stomach lurch. His breathing is shallow and his head is growing light. The First Order can’t touch Kylo Ren, they wouldn’t dare. They can’t explain away what they fear about him: his power. They have very little at their disposable with which to control it. No real answer. And besides, Kylo never sanctioned the plans for another super-weapon; it’s all still just sketchy scribbles on a holo. Unless Hux...

 _You’re still afraid,_ Rey thinks, breaking in again to his train of thought.

“I’m _not,”_ Ben whispers, still staring at the empty hill. “I just…”

 _Say it,_ Rey implores. _Ben, please..._

“I just don’t want him to leave me.”

_Then don’t fucking let him._

Kylo would storm the hill, but it’s Ben who walks it now. And when he crests it less than a hundred yards away is his father’s ship and Rey, standing at the foot of the gangway, and Finn, waiting in the foreground.

“I was never really gonna go,” Finn says. “Rey… well… I just didn’t know if I could…”

Ben strides towards him, grips him hard around the back of the head and pulls him in to his body. They kiss for so long Ben almost forgets where he is, and when Finn draws away he can’t help but smile because Finn is _still_ fucking talking.

“...Stay,” he finishes. “Because twice now I’ve left somewhere without you, Ben, and that is two times too many and I am _never_ gonna do that again if I can help it. I am _never_ gonna leave you again, in some kind of place you don’t belong in…”

“If you really don’t wanna go,” he continues, “I’ll stay here with you. And if you wanna change your mind... If you _really_ wanna go back to them, well… I can _go_ back there with you if that’s really the _only_ way, I love you so _damn_ much...”

“But if you _do_ wanna walk up that ramp, and the only thing that’s stopping you is the fact that you’re scared, I’ll walk up there with you, Ben. _I know why you’re scared.”_

“And,” Finn admits, “Quite frankly he scares the living shit outta me too, to be honest. And I don’t understand a _half_ of what he says but he likes Rey. He _really_ likes her. I mean, I know that sometimes you and her don’t see eye to eye… And, well, maybe you and me don’t always see that way, either… But she cares so much for you, Ben, she really does… She _needs_ you, just as much as _I_ do…”

Ben’s been watching the lights in Finn’s dark eyes for the whole time he’s been talking. The same ones he noticed first on the floor of the base on Crait: three points that seem to circle.

On Crait they’d made sense - so many points of light had lit that place where he and Finn first kissed - but what of here? Because somehow, beneath the natural light of a planet with only two suns, those three points of light are all still there.

“Your eyes,” Ben whispers, “Are impossible, Finn.”

Ben lifts his hand and runs the pad of his thumb over Finn’s lower lip.

“Inconceivably beautiful…”

He gazes at Finn as his words continue to echo through Ben’s head. One phrase in particular. Because Ben’s not told a single soul about that. Not ever. Not even before the standoff had Ben ever said it aloud.

And at first he considers sensing, in order to understand. But that’s not what he does in the end.

“How can you possibly know that?” Ben asks.

Because there’s something in Finn’s voice that he wants to hear again, that he always wants to hear again because he likes listening to Finn.

“About Chewie?”

“Yes,” Ben murmurs.

“Rey,” Finn answers. “She told me, she knows and, well... We kind of talk about you. Sometimes.”

Ben’s eyes flick back to the Falcon. The ramp is still down. Gently Finn’s hand pistol-grips his chin and he coaxes Ben’s gaze back to him. Finn lifts his mouth and kisses Ben again, and Ben closes his eyes and tastes him, and breathes in the familiar scents of salt and leather, and something else almost like rain.

 _Ripe figs,_ Ben thinks, grinning through their kiss like a fool at the memory of the ones in the vineyard on Naboo.

“Walk over there with me,” Finn says, when their lips part. “Let me take you inside that ship, to a _real_ bed, Ben…”

Slowly, Finn begins a series of backwards steps towards the Falcon, his fingers lacing through Ben’s as he moves, coaxing.

Ben takes one, two, then three steps forwards until at last they're moving in the same direction.

_“Sometimes?”_

As they start to walk together, towards the waiting ship - their fingers still laced and the swag still secured across Ben’s broad shoulders - Finn side-eyes him.

“Sometimes what?”

“You talk about me _sometimes?”_

“Yeah," Finn answers, grinning. “Yeah, we do.”

“But why only _sometimes?”_

They reach the foot of the gangway and Ben stops, glancing at the Silencer and then back at Finn. “Why don’t you talk about me _all_ the time?”

Finn snorts and starts to climb the Falcon's ramp.

“For starters,” Rey weighs in from the top, as Finn reaches the doorway and turns around and they both look down at Ben. “Chewie wouldn’t let us.”

Ben swallows, averts his eyes and shifts his feet uncomfortably. The Dark Place calls again and a new awareness dawns, one he senses Rey feel, too. Ben looks up.

“You saw it,” he murmurs to her, recalling the dream. “You saw the blue tide, too..."

“Yes,” she answers. “But I don’t know what it’s called, or how to find it. Just that I think that's where we need to go. _All_ of us...”

For several moments they stare at each other from opposite ends of the walkway, Ben at the bottom and Finn and Rey at the top. Rey’s hand is on the button and Chewie is somewhere inside.

“Batuu,” Ben says eventually, as some kind of himself lopes onboard, leaving the Silencer behind, and Rey closes the ramp of the Millenium Falcon.


End file.
